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Sunday, October 17, 2010

A very selective New FamilySearch Beta test?

We had an interesting occurrence this past week or so. On October 5, I received an E-mail from the New FamilySearch.org Beta Test Team, as follows:

Dear Member, We are looking for individuals who can participate in evaluating new.familysearch.org before each quarterly update.

We need individuals with different levels of computer skills, family history backgrounds, languages, and new.familysearch.org experience.

We try to evaluate this system and the new features every few months for about 2 weeks.

Your evaluation and feedback will be greatly appreciated.

Please click on "Take the Survey" below to begin the survey.

OK, so I took the survey. It was not too long but ask a lot of questions about my use of the program. Then, nothing. No further communication about the Beta Test. Over the next week, I was asked a number of times by my associates at the Mesa Regional Family History Center if I had started the Beta test. Some had received the notice of the survey but no one seemed to have gotten the Beta Test notice. I did finally hear of one person who was notified of the Beta Test.

We are speculating, of course, that is all we can do, that this test was aimed at some very specific types of users and they didn't really want input from some of us more experienced computer and New FamilySearch users? No answers, but an interesting question.

In any event, if the E-mail message is accurate, we can look for another update to New FamilySearch in the month ahead.